Public attention has been focused in recent weeks on the prospective use of ganja for certain medical purposes.

The 22nd Annual Conference of University Diabetic Outreach Programme, a joint meeting of the Diabetes Association of Jamaica led by Prof Errol Morrison OJ, the University of the West Indies, Northern Caribbean University, and the University of Technology, with its more recent meeting on medical ganja, have produced several well-researched papers validating the use of the Cannabinoids, a chemical found in the ganja plant for the treatment of Type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 diabetes affect mostly overweight adults who are over 50.

Ganja has a long history in Jamaica. It was just introduced in the 19th Century as a source of hemp by an English plantation owner in Gordon Town. Indentured Indian labourers arriving in the 1850s smoked it as part of their culture.

During the “Flower Baby” hippie period of the 1960s, ganja became widely accepted as an hallucinogenic drug. The Rastafarian community at Pinnacle smoked ganja regularly as part of their religious worship of Haile Selassie, the late Emperor of Ethiopia. Ganja smoking became very common after the police destroyed Pinnacle in the hills of St Catherine and Rastafarians spread out into rural and urban areas.

The adverse effects on adolescents and young adults became an issue of national concern in the late 1960s to 1970s. This caused significant dislocation in several families. Some concerned mothers went to Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) for guidance and assistance with this socio-cultural problem affecting their sons attending secondary schools in the Corporate Area. This led Prof morrison to do unfunded research into ganja smoking as he had a long standing concern about the neurobiology of deviant behaviour.

With the help of the Police High Command, 25 volunteers were found for the programme at the KPH. The research revealed several clinical findings of interest which were published in The Practitioner Vol 209, September 1972. The precipitous drop in blood sugar within the hour was remarkable. This was explained colloquially by the craving of ganja smokers for sugar cane and other sweets.

Clinically, repetitive lowering of the blood sugar (Hypoglycemia) can affect the brain, inducing delusions or other adverse effects. As the research on this finding of hypoglycemia progressed, it became clear that it was not ganja, per say, but the Cannabinoids which were identified as the causative factor.

There are over 400 chemicals in ganja including the Cannabiniods and THC. There is now extensive research locally, in Israel, and the USA on the possible use of the Cannabinoids in the treatment of diabetes, which affects over 400 million people globally. The KPH finding of 1972 is now coming into its own.

Dr John Hall, OJ, a Consultant Neurologist, is Chairman of the Medical Council of Jamaica. He founded the Neurology Clinic at the KPH in 1963.